Services

We are not providing tour guides, but written guides are available in eleven languages (Hungarian, English, German, Spanish, Russian, French, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Serbian, Slovakian), also can be downloaded from our website.

Szeged paprika can be bought in our gift shop.

We sell parking tickets.

Pick Pub and Restaurant offers a 10% discount for our visitors.

FAQ

What can be seen in the museum’s permanent exhibitions?

On the lower level the history of Pick salami and the salami factory, on the upper level the history of production of the Szeged paprika can be seen.

Through the Pick-collection the guests can follow the story of the factory and the salami production from the year of foundation (1869) up to these days.

On the upper floor, visitors can learn about the evolution of paprika production from the initial methods to the current technologies used by the Szegedi Paprika Co. Ltd.

Among the objects, the museum is showing the subject with photos, and document illustrated tableaus, making it more colourful and interesting with life-sized wooden puppets wearing period dresses.

Pick Pub and Restaurant offers a 10% discount from the price of meals and beverages for our visitors. The discount applies to the number of people noted on your museum bill, and available only on the day of your museum visit.

What kinds of individual preferences can be used?

Children, students, pensioners, pedagogues, persons with press card and individual visitors with tour guide-card, persons with physical or intellectual disabilities get a 25% discount from the admission fee. (Someone who is entitled to multiple discounts can take advantage of only one.)

For tour guides with a group of minimum 20 people the entrance is free.

Families with a family member younger than 18 years get a 10% discount (even there is one child or grandchild with one parent or grandparent).

For children younger than 6 years the entrance is free, if they come with their family.

We provide the discounts for everyone, regardless of nationality.

Please let us know, if you are entitled one of the discounts before paying.

We can not accept other cards, identity documents, walk tickets.

We assure the services of the museum only for paying visitors.

Is there a group fee?

For groups of twenty or more people we provide a 10% discount.

Attendants who are not pedagogues but they are with a student group still get the discount (if the attendants’ number is not more than the half of the number of the students).

For tour guides with a group the entrance is free.

We provide the discounts for every group, regardless of nationality.

We assure the services of the museum only for paying visitors.

How can groups register?

By email: info@pickmuzeum.hu

By fax: +36 62 480 800

By mail: Pick Museum, Szeged, Pf. 15 H-6701

We can welcome groups with a registered date out of our regular opening time, with a maximum 30 minutes delay (and not earlier than the registered date).

What is the maximum headcount in a group that you can receive at the same time?

A group with 50 people can leisurely see the exhibition. In exceptional cases we can host 100 guests as well. If so, the visitors will be divided into two groups and will see the exhibition collaterally.

How long does it take to visit the museum?

It takes about an hour to see the two exhibitions and to taste the salami.

According to that we welcome the registered groups hourly.

What methods of payment are there for the visitation of the museum?

Visitors can pay only in cash (HUF).

We can’t accept cultural checks, culture tickets, rest cards, and it is not possible to pay with a credit card.

If you wish we can give a cash-account.

For institutions (legal personalities) it is possible to pay by transfer, if they order it officially before the visiting of the museum.

HISTORY

‘I spread about the good fame of Szeged in Los Angeles, I always tell people that I was born in here, and the world-famous Pick salami and the Szeged paprika are made here.’

Vilmos Zsigmond – Academy Award winner cinematographer

‘History is the subject, which has the greatest effect on the developing of our scale of values, since on what other basis we can build our future if not on the past?’

Albert Szent-Györgyi – Nobel Prize winner biochemist

Pick salami

Pick salami (Szeged wintersalami): made of pork meat and pork lard on the basis of a century old producing tradition, it is made with secret spices, cold smoking, dry ripening process, in casing filled, it is a product with a special noble-mould on the surface.

The city of Szeged is situated on the bank of river Tisza. The natural bases of the counties on the Great Plain, in South Hungary, surrounding Szeged (Baranya, Bács-Kiskun, Csongrád, Békés, Hajdú-Bihar) are very favourable for cultivation of plants and animal husbandry. This good geographic situation and knowledge related to this makes it able to improve the husbandry of typical salami pork. From this area comes ripe pork, which has great weight, and which could be used for salami production.

The main phases of salami making process are: preparation of living animal, slaughtering, selection of halfpork by quality, cooling, boning, cutting of pork meat and pork lard, seasoning, filling in casings, smoking, drying, maturing, building of mould, packaging.

The local conditions give the Szeged wintersalami the very special features, the harmonious smell, typical aroma and unique flavour. The special base material, the traditional technology of salami production, the climatic conditions along river Tisza, the local existence of the mould-flora, the saved professional knowledge – given from salami master to salami master – contributed to the conquest of the world by Pick salami.

Mark Pick founded his factory in 1869 in Szeged, which he developed and enlarged. He produced salami in a larger amount with workers coming from Italy from 1883. He began salami making in large-scale in 1885. After the death of the founder (1892) his widow and her brother led the factory. They transferred the salami factory to Felső Tisza-part. The always-cool Tisza-air assured favourable climatic circumstances for the maturing process.

The eldest son, Jenő Pick – who took part in the leading since 1898 – joined the firm in 1906. It was the beginning of a new age in the history of the factory. He bought the bankrupt ‘Tiani’ salami factory in the neighbourhood, so the whole real estate at the Tisza-part belonged to the Pick’s family. Jenő Pick was aspired to get great changes with modern instruments. He had a good sense for the market, he saw the importance of the promotion. Salami became leader product in the first decade of the 20th century. The Pick factory has become the largest food processing company in Hungary in the interwar period, the Pick salami became a world famous brand. Jenő Pick led the salami factory alone from 1934 under the name of ‘Mark Pick’ until the nationalisation.

Under the leading of the Pick family and later as well famous salamimasters worked at the factory, who loved their job respectfully. The technology of salami making really demanded that the salamimaster was possessed with his job. The science of the salamimaster needed several knowledge, as the control of composition of salami paste, secret seasoning for example, the most important sciences were smoking and maturing processes.

Quality work is indispensable without technical and technological modernisation. This effort and ambition are always present at the salami factory of Szeged. As a result of this, cooling technology became able to allow ongoing production throughout the year by the end of the 1950s, whereby the seasonal nature of production was kept only in the name of the wintersalami.

The love of the job, the keeping up of traditions, professional knowledge, the essential suitability, the climatic circumstances, the favourable raw material supply, the technical state of development, the high level production technology together assure the traditionally excellent quality of the Pick salami.

Szeged paprika

Szeged paprika (Szeged paprika spice powder): made by milling of the ripened, after-ripened, and dried pods of traditional cultivated paprika grown on fields surrounding Szeged, which area has a favourable nature.

The paprika origins in South Mexico, Central America and the Antilles Islands. The aboriginal Indian used it for healing and seasoning as well. Cristopher Columbus wanted to reach the east Spice Islands on the see. He returned from the New World with unknown spices – for example – with a never-before-seen present: a paprika plant.

In the beginning plant paprika decorated baroque gardens of gentles in Europe, it arrived on trade ways to Turkey as well. From there it came to Hungary through the Balkan.

In the second half of the 16th century, Margit Széchy, a noble lady already had a plant in her garden called the red Turkish pepper (at that time also called Indian pepper or heathen pepper). The name ‘paprika’ came from the 18th Century as a diminutive form for the south-slavish name of pepper (papar), then after the Hungarian usage, the word became international and universal.

The first note mentioning paprika in Szeged dates back to 1748, the word paprika stood in an account book.

In Hungary, paprika was first used as a cure for intermittent fever, it later became a typical spice of Hungarian cooking.

While production remained for the means of family supply until the middle of the 19th century, by the turn of the century processing became serial and paprika trade important.

The paprika cultivation in this region started in Szeged Lower Town, on the black-sand-soiled fields near to Szeged, on the flooded soil of river Tisza. In 1934 Szeged and its area was declared a closed zone, so paprika powder from outside of this area was forbidden to sell as Szeged paprika.

The harvest was done exclusively traditional by hands picking that had to be repeated about 3-4 times to assure that only the stalk-ripened pods of excellent quality will be forth processed. A famous picture connected to Szeged is, paprika strings hanging on the walls of houses.

The genetic basis of the exclusive quality of Szeged paprika is constituted by state accredited paprika species improved in the Szeged region. These species accommodated best to the nature of the region, because during their improvement they used the original taste, aroma, colour giving paprika population, which developed in this area during the century.

The Szeged paprika has his special features due to the care throughout more Centuries, to the professional knowledge and the traditional processing regarding paprika, and the conditions are very favourable in Hungary for the warm-loving paprika as well. In the Szeged region the temperature-, sun- and rainfall circumstances are the most favourable of all the agricultural lands for paprika cultivating.

Today’s people need vitamins, antioxidants in an increased degree. We use paprika mostly for seasoning in cooking, however vitamins and antioxidants in it help to keep our health too. The Nobel Prize of Albert Szent-Györgyi, the vitamin C, the Szeged paprika are closely connected ideas, they made each other world famous. Though colour giving carotinoids, provitamins, tokoferol substances in the paprika seeds are materials of the 21st century.

Paprika was earlier used as a medicine as well, today they produce noteworthy healing preparations out of it too, and in the future we can consume Szeged paprika as a spice for health.

PRODUCT SAMPLE

The production technology doesn’t facilitate the indication of expiration date on the packaging of the paprika product sample, therefore the quality-conservation time can be identified by the date of visiting the museum.